Carnival Sky (25 page)

‘It’s disbelief, sorrow and anger. It’s relief as well, and a sort of emotional apathy, too, as a defence … Just a damn jumble really, so soon afterwards, but it’ll settle down. I didn’t cry when I saw him dead
in the bed, but found myself bawling when I took his car keys from the hook.’

‘I thought I’d come to the service,’ said Jessica.

‘I’d like that.’

A woman stopped beside them who knew Jessica. Sheff was introduced, but he didn’t enter their conversation about daughters and school. He smiled and nodded, offered a chair. The woman, Naomi, had a distinctive face, as smooth and oval as that in a Flemish painting, but spoke rapidly and with a rising Kiwi inflexion. She had a green handbag, and the colour prompted in him a recollection of the undertakers carrying his father’s corpse from the bedroom in a body bag of dark green vinyl with raised stitching. They’d called it a pouch and used it with seemly professionalism. Warwick first wrapped in a sheet; his face covered only after the head undertaker had asked Belize for permission. The pouch was secured with straps and buckles at chest and legs before being lifted to the wheeled stretcher and covered with a crimson shroud. Sheff was surprised at the extent of ceremony, but it wasn’t incongruous, or false. With Sheff, Georgie and Belize in attendance, the undertakers had taken care to ensure the stretcher wasn’t bumped on walls, or corners. One had sought to ease the sad awkwardness of the moment by quietly complimenting Belize on the round buxus that flanked the front step.

Jessica’s acquaintance completed a loving enumeration of her child’s foibles. ‘Oh, they can be real little devils,’ said Jessica, with an inclusive smile.

‘Yes, yes indeed,’ said Sheff finally, although he knew as little of raising children as Jessica did of close family loss.

‘Maybe I could take the parrot’s appointment?’ he said when they reached the office.

‘But there’s nothing wrong with you, is there? You’ve lost someone you love. Of course you’re sad. If you weren’t, that’s when you’d need treatment.’

‘Physical therapy even?’

Jessica ignored that. ‘I’m glad you’re not going back yet,’ she said. ‘We’ll catch up.’

‘I look forward to it. Good luck with the parrot. At least it’ll be able to describe its own symptoms.’ He watched her walk towards the entrance, and from the window the elderly receptionist regarded them both with undisguised interest.

‘I’ll see you at the service then,’ Sheff called, and Jessica turned, lifted a hand in agreement and farewell.

He wasn’t ready to rejoin Georgie and Belize, share the emotional weight that came when they were together, despite the summer light on the garden and the absence now of physical suffering within the house. There was a small domain not far from his parents’ home, and he drove there and parked. It was just a drought-browned square of grass with an asphalt path as a diagonal short-cut, two rowan trees with spray rings at the base of their trunks, and a wooden combination table and form seat. Enough of the seat was free of bird shit for him to sit there, elbows on the table, and think of his father, and of himself. And again he wished he had a cigarette. It was the activity he sought, perhaps. The tapping, the lighting, the lifting and lowering of the hand, the conscious indrawn breath, the hit of the smoke deep in the lungs, and then the grey exhalation. At a distance to the north were two lines of high poplars. The movement of the leaves caught the light, and the typical upward growth of the trees made it seem that each was consciously stretching to top its neighbours.

Was he observed from the houses beyond the hedge that bordered the grass on two sides, or from the occasional vehicle that passed? A lone guy sitting at a picnic table, but with nothing laid out before him: a forty-four-year-old man, big-boned and fair-haired because of some Norwegian forebear. A journalist with two degrees and no job by his own choice. Someone surprised by his own tendency to anger, disconcerted by occasional nosebleeds, obliged to accept that his ex-wife was happier with another man. A guy who has lost the one child, the one wife, and the one father, he ever had.

There was a companion, however, of a sort. A mallard drake that came with resolute waddle from the hedge and, having reached the table, stood expectantly with head raised. Sheff knew of no pond in the vicinity, but assumed it a picnic duck: one of those that hung around such public lawns in hope of scraps. He didn’t warm to it, despite its approach. He disliked ducks because they fouled the grass, so that you went home with a pungent, green mayonnaise on your shoes. ‘Piss off then,’ he told it, but the mallard settled itself in the grass not far from his feet. The plumage of its head had a blue-green iridescence.

The conversation had gone no further with the duck, when it was interrupted by a voice from the hedge. ‘Piss off yourself, weirdo.’ No one was visible, but it was a kid’s voice, a boy’s voice, and there were others like it in half-suppressed laughter. Sheff wasn’t much surprised. There were always aimless kids behind hedges waiting and hoping for opportunity for amusement, or mischief. What did surprise him was to be struck hard on the left wrist by a cricket ball. It hurt. He strode towards the hedge that was above head-height, and as he neared it could hear the boys running away: not scattering in fear and dismay, but jogging away with catcalls and whistles. What was the use of shouting after them? Instead he turned back and sought out the ball in the grass. It lay not far from the table: a cheap and rather worn cricket ball, and not red, but a grass-stained grey. The mallard drake was gone, and Sheff was alone again. He felt sufficient vindictiveness, and pain, to deny the kids the ball’s return, and he flung it far to the back of the domain before driving home. His father had died in the night, but ducks and parrots, cricket-ball attacks, blueberry muffins and his affection for Jessica went on just the same. Events seemed somehow compressed until they assumed a grotesque parity. Things that deserved precedence were belittled, those of no significance advanced themselves. The purpose of any endeavour was obscure. It had been that way since Charlotte’s death, and the feeling was intensified by the loss of his father. Maybe it would always be that way now.

Warwick and Belize had little opportunity to see Charlotte before she died, and Sheff had few memories of them together. His mother had spent time feeding her with great care while she waved her hands in the high-chair, and he had a recollection of his father rather awkwardly crouched on the floor, loosely holding her small feet and stroking the tops of them with his thumbs.

Georgie and Belize had been busy in Sheff’s absence, and already the house had a hollow neatness, the paraphernalia of terminal illness checked and stacked. The sickroom was impersonal. The stripped bed with the blankets folded on it, the small table cleared of medicines and cards, and only flowers remaining. The window wide to give an airing now that no body lay within, the syringe pump, his father’s final friend, confined to its transparent box. His father had vanished as a physical presence, and taken with him those apparitions that had surrounded him at the end – his mother, Neddy Ackerley, his first business partner, donkeys in the mountains of Portugal, cascading sand dunes he claimed lay outside the sickroom window, the fur coats he imagined hung in the corner of his room. All was memory, or delusion. There could be nothing new of him.

HE’D HALF EXPECTED A PRAM
for Charlotte, not having paid attention to the vehicles used for transporting babies, but Lucy had said prams were out, completely, and that strollers were the thing. When he looked about him, he realised that she was right. So they bought a beauty, with white wheels and a transparent front cover that gave full protection in wind, or rain. Charlotte enjoyed the movement, and Lucy saw the outings as an opportunity for exercise, sometimes even trotting with it when the footpaths were broad and smooth. Sheff rather liked to dawdle, and look in often to see his daughter’s face. Sometimes she slept, but more often she would meet his enquiry with a smile, or wide-eyed solemnity.

SCREENWRITERS’ FUNERALS ARE SOMBRE, the full frame of portentous weather – lowering cloud, slanting rain, thunder even to signal higher acknowledgement – and the huddle of black-clothed mourners. For Warwick it was another still, bright day with bird calls in the trees, and the fragrance of rough grasses beyond the cemetery. The golfing weather that he’d have chosen. The flight of his ball didn’t suit a wind.

The cemetery was stretched along the grassy slope, with dark, uneven pines on the rising ground behind, and a line of civilised poplars on the other side, which the graves faced as if drawn up on parade. No gardens, but flowers lay at the base of many graves nevertheless. Most commemorations were of modest height in schist, or marble, a few originals close to the entrance made a Victorian display with wrought-iron surrounds like bedsteads, and pale, high angels, or crosses.

Many people came, because Warwick had been a non-interfering, affable man and long in honest business within the same town. The broad, unsealed drive was filled with cars. Most of those attending were older than Sheff, but they didn’t cast themselves completely in the role of mourners. There were light-hearted reminiscences and anecdotes as well as earnest condolences, and folk stood in groups and chatted, laughed even, as they gathered and life went on. Among
other emotions, the death of someone else provides quiet satisfaction that you yourself are still alive.

Close to Sheff, a tall woman in green and pink came back from her car with a plastic bag of fruit for a friend. ‘I thought I’d see you here,’ she told her. ‘A good chance. I’ve been meaning to drop something round for ages, but the kids have had chicken pox and been off school.’ All significance is calibrated in accordance with its relationship to our own lives. For the green and pink woman, family sickness rightly overshadowed the death of her accountant.

Aunt Cass was there with her thick-set, chiropractor husband who talked pleasantly of building and flying his own microlight. Cass was never as attractive as Belize, and was showing her age. The same striking blue eyes, but she was heavy of hip and had a noticeable tide-mark to her make-up at the hairline. Meeting her triggered for Sheff another vivid tableau.

In his first year at secondary school he’d come home early to find his mother out, and his father and Cass in the guest bedroom. From the hall he could hear a rhythmic and muted working of the bed, and low voices in a wordless exchange, but at first he didn’t understand. When he stood at the partly open door he saw his father kneeling hard up behind Cass and with his hands on her shoulders. Cass’s face was lost in the duvet, and her long, pale hair, so much like her sister’s, flowed out before her. She and Warwick intermingled soft noises of pleasure, and Warwick’s face had a faraway blankness. His hair was oddly fluffed up, as if by some powerful neural charge. His eyes were wide, but seemed not to see his son watching at the partly open door, and then he dropped his gaze but continued working.

Sheff had left the house immediately, and on his return he found his father, mother and aunt having coffee and shortbread on the patio. It was as if the lovemaking had never happened. Warwick said nothing, so neither did Sheff, and the more time passed, the less it seemed a possible topic, the more it belonged in a different realm of experience. As an adult Sheff saw it all quite differently, and wondered if his father
had told face-down Cass that they’d been observed. Never afterwards did she show any embarrassment, even when alone with Sheff, and she continued to be close to Belize, to come to stay, sometimes with her husband, who was hopeless at golf, but generous with treats for Sheff and Georgie and a whizz with anything that needed repair.

It was her sister whom Cass was concerned for at Warwick’s funeral, rather than being overwhelmed at the loss of a sometime lover, and her solicitude seemed genuine. That coupling years before may well have been a single and impetuous thing, meaning little against the love they both had for Belize. Or it may have been the one glimpse of an affair that for a time at least was the focus of their world. It was no one else’s business now, and most certainly long over.

‘I can come down for as long as I’m needed,’ Cass volunteered. ‘I’ve told Belize that. Or she can come to us, can’t she, Norman?’

‘Absolutely. As long as she likes. Absolutely,’ affirmed Norman.

‘She’s always been so strong,’ said Cass. ‘She doesn’t like to ask for help.’

‘It’s kind of you,’ said Sheff. Cass hadn’t been to see Warwick in his last weeks. That could be explained in all sorts of ways, and there was no profit in surmise. And Nelson was a long drive.

‘Anything we can do,’ said Cass, squinting slightly into the sun. ‘Anything.’

People seemed reluctant to go into the chapel. They clustered in the outside brightness, turned to each other and the plots searching for acquaintance. Sheff noticed Belize pointing him out to a small, upright man in a good suit, who then came across and introduced himself as Simon Pask, Warwick’s partner. Belize had asked him to be one of the pallbearers. Despite their being unknown to each other, Simon gripped Sheff’s arm with some familiarity. ‘Sorely missed,’ he said. ‘I saw him on almost a daily basis for nearly fifteen years. I visited him several times before you and your sister came home, but didn’t like to bother you all towards the end. Yes, sorely missed. In all that time never a cross word, you know that. Quite remarkable in business.’

‘He didn’t like arguments,’ said Sheff.

‘Never a cross word. Fancy that. And punctilious to a fault, if that’s possible.’

‘I suppose it’s that sort of profession.’ Sheff remembered his father saying his partner was lazy, that he was one of the few men who still smoked cigarillos, and had to be asked not to do so in the office. There did seem an emanation of tobacco fumes from him, and even his complexion had a teakish quality. ‘Dad often worked late at the office, but as a matter of principle rarely brought work home,’ said Sheff. ‘And he was a quick, focused worker, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, indeed, and never a cross word. Sorely missed. And where is Georgie, your sister?’ Pask was already looking about, having done his duty as far as the son was concerned. He stood very straight, making the most of what height he had. From the sleeve of his dark suit a cuff-link gleamed silver. Once Georgie was located, he was briskly away to pay his respects there. He and many others had shared life to some degree with Warwick, but Sheff felt little connection with them, having the selfish conviction that the essential man was unknown to them.

A woman with a slash of cherry lipstick materialised before him, shifting until she was absolutely square on. ‘Remember me,’ she said. He did, of course, although she wore a lemon dress, not the jeans she had on when she’d accosted him in the café, or the red shorts when she breasted him on the bridge walkway. He recalled the firm restraint of her hand on his shoulder, the flowers somersaulting gracefully towards the river.

‘I remember. Did you know my father?’ he said.

‘Never met him, but I knew the name,’ she said. ‘I came because of you. You’re still hanging around Jessica like a bad smell, even though I told you it’s not a good idea. I reckon you’re a slow learner.’

‘What the hell is it with you?’ Sheff found it preposterous that he was again being confronted by this dumpy woman, and given orders. He still half expected the whole thing to be a joke: for her to break into
laughter and say he’d fallen for it, that she was a friend of Georgie’s, or Jessica’s, and they were having him on. Except that she bore somehow an authentic hostility.

‘What have you done to your face?’ Her satisfaction in referring to the minor injury was obvious.

‘It’s no business of yours.’

‘Been poking it where it doesn’t belong, I bet.’

‘Well, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

‘Believe me, I’ll cut your balls off if I have to. Understand?’ And she made a snipping gesture. ‘It’s a sad time for you and all that, but you need to pay attention to what I’m saying. I’m not kidding.’ She made no effort to lower her voice.

‘Who made you the bloody ringmaster?’ said Sheff. ‘It’s pretty sick to come to a funeral and carry on like this. I bet you’ve got some crush on Jessica yourself. Well, she can look after herself. She doesn’t need a minder. Grow up, for Christ’s sake.’

She seemed to come a step closer without moving her feet, and glared up into his face. ‘No more warnings,’ she said ominously, ‘so it’s up to you. Jessica’s off-limits. She’s a lovely person and she’d had enough of pricks like you. You’ve done your family duty down here, and now you should just piss off back where you came from. I’m done with warnings.’

They stood in silence for a few moments, quite close, scrutinising each other while more amicable conversations went on around them. The woman wasn’t embarrassed. She had a pugnacious righteousness and met his gaze. Her face was a doll-like one of reduced features and smooth surface. A bumble bee hung droning between them for a moment, resembling an animated and brightly banded small fruit, but she wasn’t distracted.

‘What’s your name?’ Sheff asked, but she fronted up to that, too, without hesitation.

‘Pamela Rudge.’

‘Well, Pamela, don’t tell me what to do.’ A weak response, but the
best he could come up with. He’d failed to gain the initiative in a situation that should have ensured it – accosted at his father’s funeral by a strange woman with demands to end a reciprocated friendship. When he said no more, Pamela gave a slight smile, accentuated by the brightness of her lipstick, drew a finger significantly across her throat, then turned and walked towards the cars. Her lemon dress seemed brighter than the clothes of the other women, but unsuitable nevertheless, in a way Sheff was unable to determine: maybe it was just that she had seemed more comfortable in jeans or shorts. He tried to think of some crushing statement to make to her back, but came up with nothing.

He thought about her as he sat with Georgie and their mother in the chapel. The woman’s powerful sexual jealousy seemed strange, but was no more bizarre perhaps than any of the other emotions that blazed forth in relationships. Even as he gave his eulogy he looked along the rows for a woman in a lemon dress, in case she’d come back prepared to break into his speech with further threats, or stride to the coffin and denounce him. People had crowded in, standing at the back, even in the small foyer and overflowing into the sunlight. He was almost certain she wasn’t present, but Jessica was, and her smile enabled Sheff to dismiss the other woman.

Because he’d feared he might be overcome with emotion while speaking of his father, he’d written it all down, and he read it word for word. The precaution was needless, for he felt quite calm, partly because he had no sense of Warwick’s presence, but more because he refused in public to reveal a depth of love, or sorrow. There was nothing of genuine intimacy in what he said. Apart from Georgie and Belize, perhaps Cass, the people sitting there surely had no real knowledge of his father, no share in his inner life. They had no entitlement to share the grief of family.

None of the other speakers, save Georgie, caused him to change his opinion. Simon Pask repeated his truisms of the sorely missed, and told of Warwick’s equanimity when he made his sole hole-in-one.
‘Completely unruffled. Totally,’ he said, lifting his teak face, giving a theatrical chuckle, more interested in his own oration than any sincere tribute. Neighbours spoke of unobtrusive support and helpfulness as neighbours do, clients extolled his husbandry on their behalf, and an elderly woman with dyed hair and a self-induced plum claimed an acquaintance since they were both three years old, as if that alone gave her both precedence and privilege.

Georgie’s tribute was the only one that touched Sheff at all: far more personal and affecting than his own. She said Warwick was a man of undisclosed ambitions, a hidden idealist who took refuge in benevolent cynicism. She spoke of his equanimity, his love of walking and detestation of rap music, his liberalism within the family and repression of the garden. Sheff’s vocation was words, and he was impressed by her insight, but thought it wasted on the gathering, though he knew very few of those who had come, and had no evidence to support his disparagement. To himself he admitted that maybe the unwillingness to credit others with a true affection for his father arose from a selfish need to foreground his own relationship.

The burial was short and simple. Warwick wasn’t a believer. After the dutiful stand at the open grave, Sheff looked for Jessica among the people spreading out on the lawns among the headstones. A few folk had headed for the car park immediately, but on such a fine, still day most preferred to stand in groups and talk. Jessica was in conversation with a couple she introduced as the Tanes, wine growers from Cromwell who had been Warwick’s clients. After making that clear and giving their commiserations, they moved away, leaving Sheff and Jessica together as they wished. For the first time he saw her dressed up. The frock was slim-cut and sleeveless, the colour a deep blue. She had a sapphire ring on her left hand, a slim gold bracelet on the same wrist, and her lips were lightly glossed. An understated glamour that suited her and the occasion, yet Sheff preferred her as she had been at other times – casual, with little make-up, and shoes she could wear into a paddock. He was reminded that she was a professional
woman, divorced and with a child. The dress had no collar and the small birthmark on her neck was visible. She had made no attempt to hide or disguise it, and Sheff liked that: it expressed something of her nature.

‘I knew there’d be a lot of people,’ she said.

‘Well, he was an accountant in a small town for a long time. Pretty much everyone got to know him, and he had a knack for getting on with folk.’

‘I prefer cremations. It’s sad to have the eulogies, and then have to go and look down into a grave.’

‘I think he felt much the same,’ said Sheff, ‘but Mum wanted more of a memorial than a name among many on a wall.

‘How is she?’